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March 31, 2008
Fill a Word table with Access data?
Almost effortless collaboration is a key selling point for Microsoft Office: If the data already exists in one format, why
re-enter it in another. Usually Office delivers nicely on its promise. Word is troublesome, however, because it
doesn’t offer an import feature. Using the File Open feature, you can specify a number of file formats, but Microsoft
Access is missing. When you think about it, that makes good sense -- the two formats just aren’t compatible.
However, the Access table construct is similar enough to a Word table, that you might expect Word to handle a
simpler transfer from table to Word document. Unfortunately, there’s no intuitive way to get Access data into a
Word table, but that doesn’t mean you can't do it -- you just need to know where to look for help.
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It’s a waste of time to try to find a way to copy Access data into a Word document without dragging along Access’
record and column format. There’s no silver bullet for the process -- but you can reduce the amount of effort by
copying only the data you actually need. In other words, you might want to work from a query instead of a table.
That won’t always be the case, but seldom will you want to copy an entire table.
The Clipboard method has a few pros and cons. On the downside, you must have permission to open the
database and view the data and you must know how to create a query or at least know how to view data in a
table. If you’re familiar with Access, you can limit the data instead of copying the entire table to W ord and dealing
with extraneous data there.
Figure A shows a query in Datasheet view that returns only three columns of data from the Orders table in
Northwind (the sample database that comes with Access). You could also limit the records and sort the data using
the query, before it ever reaches Word.
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How do I: Fill a Word table with Access data?
Figure A
You can copy data from an Access table or query, but a query makes it easy to limit the data you copy.
To copy data from Access to a Word table, using the Clipboard do the following:
1. In Access, select all the data in the resulting query (or table).
2. Select all the records by clicking the intersecting header cell at the top-left corner (circled in Figure A), or by
pressing [Ctrl]+[A].
3. Press [Ctrl]+[C] to copy the selected data to the Clipboard.
4. Open a new Word document.
5. Choose Paste Special from the Edit menu. In Word 2007, choose Paste Special from the Paste command’s
dropdown list. You’ll find the Paste command in the Clipboard group on the Home tab.
6. In the resulting Paste Special dialog box, click Unformatted Text, as shown in Figure B, and then click OK.
Figure C shows the Access data in columnar format.
7. Now that you have the data in Word, you can quickly insert a Word table. In the Word document, select all the
data by pressing [Ctrl]+[A].
8. Choose Convert from the Table menu and then select Text to Table from the resulting submenu. In Word
2007, you’ll find this command in the Table command’s dropdown list. The Table command is in the Tables
group on the Insert tab. Word does a good job of anticipating the table’s requirements, as you can see in
Figure D.
9. Click OK to insert the table shown in Figure E.
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Copyright ©2008 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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How do I: Fill a Word table with Access data?
Figure B
Paste Special offers a new of ways to paste data from the Clipboard into a Word document.
Figure C
Figure D
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How do I: Fill a Word table with Access data?
Figure E
Once you have the data in a Word table, you can format the table and sort the data (using the Table menu’s Sort
command).
Figure C shows the results of copying just the data, although Word retains a columnar format. If you press
[Ctrl]+[V] to paste the data into Word instead of using Paste Special from the Edit menu, Word copies the data
and a table, of sorts, as shown in Figure F. You can reformat the table or convert it to just text. If you can live with
this table, [Ctrl]+[V] saves a click or two.
Figure F
You can save a few clicks by pressing Ctrl+V to copy the Access data into Word.
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How do I: Fill a Word table with Access data?
Figure G
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How do I: Fill a Word table with Access data?
Figure H
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How do I: Fill a Word table with Access data?
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Version history
Version: 1.0
Published: March 31, 2008
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